When building internet protocol (IP) router capabilities with centralized dynamic route determination and distributed high performance IP packet processing capability, that are portable to many different host system architectures, it is necessary to have an efficient internal protocol for the transportation of control, maintenance, performance information, dynamic routing protocol message distribution messages, and routing table distribution management messages. Existing implementations of IP routers are system specific, and do not lend themselves to being portable to multiple operating environments.
A need exists for a protocol for use with existing and new communication system architectures to provide high performance internal communications capability for adding IP network routing functions to a host system such as, for example, an IP router, a telecommunication switching system, or a telecommunication transmission system. Such a protocol assumes the addition of an IP network route processing functioning component and multiple distributed IP packet flow processing functional components.